Daniel 9:26

“And after the sixty two sevens the anointed one will be cut off, and will have nothing, and the people of the coming prince will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And their end will be with a flood. And even to the end there will be war. Desolations are determined.”

Now if we read this verse without preconceived notions, and without a theory to be supported, the natural interpretation of this verse is that the anointed prince, who was to come after the sixty nine ‘sevens' have passed, will be cut off, and that his people will then destroy the city and the sanctuary. And this is supported by the fact that the prince is a ‘nagid' (a prince of Israel, see earlier in the passage) in both cases. Note especially that on this interpretation Daniel 9:25 speaks of ‘the anointed one, the prince', then Daniel 9:26 refers to him first as ‘the anointed one' and then as ‘the prince'. Thus the three references fit together as referring to the same person in three different ways, the first combining both terms and preparing for the other two.

Indeed on this basis the whole passage fits together. The prince arrives. Rebellion takes place. The prince is cut off (compare Leviticus 7:20; Psalms 37:9; Isaiah 53:8). Then his rebellious people destroy the city and sanctuary. But could this be seen as happening to God's anointed prince? Could it be that the One for whom Israel has waited should be cut off (put to death for gross sin), and finish up with nothing?

That that could be seen as happening is evidenced by Isaiah's picture of the anointed prophet who, personifying Israel, comes to proclaim the truth to Israel (Isaiah 49:1), is falsely tried, smitten, spat on and shamed (Isaiah 50:6; Isaiah 53:7), and sets his face like a flint to go towards his destiny (Isaiah 50:7), with the result that he is made to suffer and is offered as a sacrifice (Isaiah 53:3; Isaiah 53:8; Isaiah 53:10), thereby accomplishing the will of God (Isaiah 53:10). And finally He is to be exalted, extolled and be very high (Isaiah 52:13). Daniel may well have had this picture and thought in mind, especially if we link it with the anointed prophet in Isaiah 61:1.

The fact is that all were looking forward to the coming of an anointed Prince (Isaiah 11:1; Isaiah 9:6; Isaiah 55:3; Hosea 3:4) or Prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15; Deuteronomy 18:18; Isaiah 42:1; Isaiah 49:1; Isaiah 53:1; Isaiah 61:1). But the prophets had come to realise that when such a One came Israel would reject Him, because He would not fulfil their expectations, They would put Him away because He was too righteous (compare Zechariah 13:7). But above all they recognised that somehow, in spite of what they did, God's purposes would be fulfilled through that rejection.

Of course this picture will not be pleasing to those who want to see Antiochus Epiphanes as the prince who destroys the sanctuary (but why then a nagid?), nor to those who want to see it as referring to Titus or the king of the end days. But it is very questionable whether any of these could be given the title ‘nagid', which means a prince anointed by God and chosen as His adopted son. Indeed it is difficult to see why Antiochus Epiphanes or the king of the end days should be called ‘prince' at all, or why they would be spoken of, uniquely, in terms of their people. They are always referred to elsewhere as ‘king'. And there is really no reason why the Roman invasion should not have been attributed to a king, for Titus was acting on his father's authority. But these difficulties are often simply overlooked because they get in the way of a theory.

A further point to be made is that the reference is to ‘ the people  of the prince who is coming.' Now if the prince has been cut off we can see immediately why they should be so described. On the other hand Daniel does not otherwise normally refer to ‘the people'. He refers directly to the king or the kingdom, whilst the people who follow the king are assumed. Why then this sudden change? Why say ‘the people of Antiochus' or ‘the people of Titus'? It is very odd indeed and against all precedent.

However there is one circumstance where ‘the people' are referred to rather than the prince, and that is in Daniel 7:27 where reference is to the people of God in contrast with the kings and their kingdoms. They are called ‘the people of the saints of the Most High'. There the emphasis is on the people and not the prince. Thus general usage is against the phrase ‘the people of the coming prince' being seen as signifying a worldly ruler and is in favour of it indicating Israel, although in this case Israel in rebellion.

But how then was this fulfilled? Certainly an ‘anointed prince' came in Jesus Christ (Jesus the anointed One), and certainly He was put to death and had nothing. And certainly by their act of crucifying Jesus Israel brought on its own head the wrath of God resulting in the destruction of the city and the sanctuary. This was something that Jesus again and again pointed out would happen. The act of rejecting and crucifying Him was constantly connected by Him with the idea of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.

They had refused to listen to Him when He sought to gather them as chickens under His wings and their house would therefore be left to them desolate (Matthew 23:37; Matthew 24:2; compare John 2:19). The fig tree was to be cursed and the mountain was to be thrown into the sea (Mark 11:21). Jesus was confident that the Temple would be destroyed, and that must surely have been with His coming death in mind (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21). Compare how in the same context in Daniel as this verse Jerusalem's previous destruction came from a curse on them in Daniel 9:11. So by this act of cutting off the Messiah the people are seen by Daniel as again putting themselves under a curse, and thus, by it, bringing about the effective destruction of the city and the sanctuary.

Furthermore it should be noted that very similar language was in fact used by the Jewish historian Josephus in 1st century AD, who also ascribed the destruction of Jerusalem to his own people and their behaviour. He says, ‘I venture to say that the sedition destroyed the city and the Romans destroyed the sedition.' And again, ‘I should not mistake if I said that the death of Ananus was the beginning of the destruction of the city, and that  from this very day may be dated the overthrow of her walls.' (Italics ours).

And when we look at what happened we can understand why he said it. For the story of the end of Jerusalem in 70 AD is almost unbelievable. The Jews behaved like madmen. They fought each other even while the armies of Rome were approaching the city, and in consequence they sacked much of the city. They even destroyed the grain supplies to prevent their rivals from using them. The different factions then defended different places from which they glared at each other, and made sallies against each other, although in the end also, with much bravery, fighting the Romans. And it must seem very probable that they did deliberately set alight their own temple in order to prevent Titus from desecrating it (Titus had given strict orders for the preservation of the Temple). So the suggestion that they destroyed their own city is certainly historically true, and if Josephus could thus date this destruction of Jerusalem from the death of Ananus, how much more could it be dated from the death of their God sent Messiah.

How poignant is the picture. The city and sanctuary having been built, the anointed prince comes. But the people are so sinful that they ‘cut Him off', (a phrase which regularly signifies someone cut off for gross sin) and then by their actions bring about the destruction of the very city and sanctuary which they had so longed for. Retribution indeed. By it the sinfulness of man is revealed to its fullest extent. But by it also the city and sanctuary are finished. They are written off. Hope now lies totally in God. In other words this revelation is emphasising that final hope must not be placed in the city of Jerusalem or in the Temple

We must pause for a moment to consider this picture. Daniel has seen and known of the process of Jerusalem's first destruction, which has witnessed to the sinfulness of his people, he has been informed of the sacrilege to happen against the second temple in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, which was to be the end of the days of indignation against his people's sins (Daniel 8:19), and now he learns that Jerusalem and the sanctuary are once more to be destroyed, this time by his own people. The message could only be that once again his people as a whole will fail to truly respond to God, that no hope can be placed in them, even though they have been given another chance.

‘And their end will be with a flood. And even to the end there will be war. Desolations are determined.' Scripture often describes invaders in terms of a flood. See Daniel 11:22; Isaiah 8:7; Isaiah 17:13; Jeremiah 46:8. So Israel having killed their Messiah will experience the flood of God's anger (Nahum 1:8). Reference is made to ‘their end', which comes suddenly, and then to ‘the end'. This could be to the end of a new period of God's indignation against them (compare Daniel 8:19), or possibly to the end of time. Either way it is described in terms of war. Jesus may well have had this verse in mind when He spoke of wars and rumours of wars (Mark 13:7). Some have tried to see ‘even to the end' as signifying a gap between the sixty ninth and seventieth week. But if that were so it would leave the destruction of the city and the Temple to occur before the gap, and thus in the sixty ninth seven. For their theory it is simply self-defeating. And it is difficult to see ‘to the end' as signifying any other than what it says. To the end of the seventy ‘sevens'.

‘Desolations are determined.' The world and its sinfulness is such that there can only be desolations. Man in his inner heart does not change unless transformed by the power of Christ. Thus his continuing sinfulness will result in desolations, and is the reason why God determines desolations on him. War and desolations are to be the future of mankind.

Note On The Prince Who Will Come.

The natural interpretation of the prince who will come in the context, given that the reference is to his people, is that it refers to the prince already described as coming in Daniel 9:25. He has been cut off and therefore his people are left to act on their own. This would tie in with the use of nagid, which almost always refers to a king of Israel appointed by God, and it would also link him and his death with the destruction of the city and the Temple, something which the Gospels do of the death of Jesus.

There is, however, another popular view (although not among most scholars) which attempts to see in this description a reference to a king who will come prior to the second coming of Christ. The idea is that his people are mentioned (which they see as the Romans) pointing to the fact that the king of those final days of the age will also be connected with the Roman empire, a Roman empire that is revived. But this view must be rejected for a number of reasons:

· Firstly because the term nagid is not the term that Daniel would use of such a king. He would use either sar or melech. He only elsewhere uses nagid of an Israelite prince.

· Secondly because the people who destroyed the city and Temple would not be his people. They would be the people of the emperor who was ruling the Roman empire at the time. Thus it is far too subtle. Surely had Daniel intended to convey such a message he could have done it by directly referring to the king and indicating his connection with the fourth beast. It took the subtle minds of the modern era to weave together such a pattern from different parts of Daniel.

· Thirdly because it seems a very backhand way in which to introduce such an important personage without giving any further information about him.

· Fourthly because those who hold this view then see him as a foreigner ‘confirming covenant' with the Jews. But in this case he would be making the covenant not confirming it. Why then use the idea of ‘confirming'. And besides the word ‘covenant' is not the one used of treaties and alliances made by foreign kings in Daniel. It is elsewhere only used of the covenant with God, which would then make sense of it being confirmed because it was already in existence, and having been broken required confirmation.

· Fifthly because normally in Hebrew the antecedent of ‘he' would be sought in the subject of a previous sentence unless there were good grounds for seeing otherwise. And a previously unmentioned prince would hardly be good grounds.

Thus everything about this interpretation is wrong.

End of note.